low carbon energy and engineering

biofuel and orang utans

There’s an article in today’s Observer on how the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia may drive orang utans to extinction by 2012. Because of increased demand for palm oil for processed food and as a biofuel, deforestation is taking place 30% faster than previously estimated.

With some friends, I went to Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo in 1997 to see orang utans in the wild and at the rehabilitation centre set up by Birute Galdikas. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

As our close cousins, orangs share many of our best traits and lack many of our worst. Henry might only be 5 or 6 years old when we wipe out the last of the wild orang utans – he won’t have the chance to see them like we did. That thought disgusts me and makes me indescribably sad.